Gingerbread Houses

Last year we had to scrap Gingerbread Houses because with my parents gone, it just didn't come together.  So, now that they're home we were excited to pick the tradition back up.  I even helped my mom and sisters assemble them this year which was fun.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving we went over to my mom's house to start the fun.  We were a little later than I wanted to be and it was pretty chaotic by the time we got there.

 We got right to work as soon as we found a spot.

 Brigham didn't like the chaos but he did let me help him decorate.

 So many grandkids, even Rachelle's "kids" came.

 Nathaniel really got in touch with his artistic side.

 Brigham usually just watches me decorate his house but he helped a lot this year.

 Jonathan did a good job too.

 It's really hard to get an accurate picture of how many kids there are.  There is a whole other table to the right, and another one to the left.  My boys are sitting at a table behind Chris.

 When Brigham had had enough, he wandered around.

 Nathaniel was still busy on his house.

 Grandma and Cohen.  He doesn't like girls, but he likes Grandma.

 Nathaniel really loves baby Logan.

 After decorating we had fun outside.

Grandma's house is the funnest house.

I'm so glad my parents are home again and that we can share in our fun traditions.

Gratitude Tree

I'm always looking for way to make Thanksgiving meaningful.  Gratitude is a wonderful thing to have and I want my boys to learn how important it is.  I know some families who do this already but this year I decided to give the Gratitude tree a try.  My curriculum for Jonathan uses The Friend as a resource and the story I had him read was about making a Gratitude Tree and so I decided that this was the perfect opportunity.

Jonathan and I went to the craft store to see what we could find.  November was already half over but we found a roll of paper that had a wood panel texture to it.  I figured that was close enough.  We also managed to find a small package of silk leaves.  I knew it wouldn't last the whole month but there were enough to tide us over until the leaf paper punch arrived in the mail.  I wasn't about to start cutting them out by hand.

There weren't a ton of leaves on it since we started halfway through November, plus some days I just forgot, but we did pretty well.  We ended up with more than what is in the picture.  The boys did a good job.  Because we had to come up with something new everyday, they had to start thinking harder about their blessings.  It was a good reminder.  I helped Brigham come up with things he's thankful for and he did a pretty good job coming up with things.  One thing I loved that he was thankful for were his slippers.  He even mentioned it twice because we forgot he had already said that before.

We will definitely do it again next year.  I have a whole roll of wood panel paper that I need to use up.

TOFW

My sisters, my mom, and I went to Time Out for Women this year.  Another sister-in-law goes ever year with her sisters and mom and so we thought we might try it out as a new tradition.  None of us had ever been and we weren't sure what to expect.  It ended up being really fun and wonderfully uplifting.

 Here is Friday night.

 It was so fun to hang out with my sisters and my mom.

We hear from Sheri Dew, Teryl and Fiona Givens, and Hudson Lights.  Then Sheri Dew interviewed Ann Romney.

 On Saturday Sara came over say hi.  She and her sisters were sitting right across from us.

Saturday was great, we heard from so many inspiring people.  I think my favorite was Michael Wilcox.  We didn't want to leave or stand in line for lunch so Heather picked up some Subway sandwiches for us and we ate them in the car.

Overall it was wonderful and I think I'd like to do it again.

Cutting Hair

I'm the hair cutter in our house.  I've cut Jaaromy's hair since we've been married(with the exception of the first post-marriage haircut) and I've been the one to cut every hair on my boys' heads.

It's always been interesting to me to see the different shades of hair color on the four of them.  When I cut their hair a few weeks ago, for some reason I wanted to keep the hair piles separate so I could see the different colors.

Can you match the hair pile with the head?

Mike Lee's Welcome Home Rally

I was doing so well catching up on my blog and now it's been like three weeks.  To be fair, not much has happened.  I hadn't even uploaded any new pictures in a while.  But now that I have, I do have a few things to share.

I went to a rally to welcome Mike Lee home from D.C.  It was kind of a last minute event but the turn out was great.  I had heard that the opposition party had sent out an email to get people to come and protest.  I certainly couldn't have them outnumber his supporters so I went.  I tried to get my brothers to come too, but they were all lazy busy.  Apparently, they don't care as much about our country as I do.  When I got there I realized that I didn't need to worry.  There were many hundreds of people, if not thousands.

 This is the guy who was standing in front of me.  His wife was with him and had a sign.  She saw one of the handful of protesters and wanted to go and stand by him with her sign and he calmly and quietly said something to to effect of "No, honey, it's okay."  I really do love these people and I'm happy to count myself as one of them.

It was good to hear all the speakers.  It turns out I'm not very good at yelling out in a crowd.  The best I can do is a short "Woo!"  After that my voice cracks.  I guess I should practice or something.

Another bonus is that I now know the song "What Does the Fox Say?".  I had only heard about it until now.

Halloween

Halloween was fun this year, nobody was sick or anything.  Deciding what to be was a little tricky for everyone.  I actually dressed up this year.  Mostly because I have this fun poodle skirt that I made when Nathaniel was really little, you know, back in the day when I actually made Halloween costumes...for fun.  Well, it fits me again so I wanted to wear it.  I even found some fun accessories to go with it.

I asked Jonathan at the beginning of October what he wanted to be and he said he wanted to be Bowser.  I guess I was hoping he'd change his mind or something because I didn't ever look into it.  About a week away from Halloween I realized that there is no pre-made Bowser costume for me to buy.  If he wanted to be Bowser, I'd have to make it.  There was no way that was going to happen.  I asked him what his second choice was.  He decided on Petey Piranha.  I assumed that I would have to make that as well and I tried to persuade him to choose something else.  I even took him to two halloween stores to find something he'd like.  He saw a lot of cool costumes but none of them were Petey Piranha costumes.  His mind was set.  He was so sad.  I took him home and had him look on Amazon for any costume he wanted.  We still had time for something to be shipped to us.  None of those costumes interested him either.  He told me that he had seen a Petey Piranha hat online somewhere so I searched for it and found a website that sold Mario costumes.  They had a Petey Piranha hat for $15 so I bought it for him.  Apparently, it had to ship from Hong Kong so to get it here on time I had to pay about $20 in shipping.  Even if I had ordered it with plenty of time it would have cost $8.  I was feeling guilty for not getting started on his costume sooner so I went ahead and got it for him.  I suppose I could have spent that much on a costume here anyway.  We got the hat in just a few days and then I assumed we'd just have him wear a green shirt and pants.  Apparently, Petey Piranha also wears red shorts with white dots on them.  Luckily, it wasn't too hard to put that together.

I totally forgot to prepare Brigham for Halloween.  I assumed he'd be Link again, because he makes such a cute Link.  I had orchestra the night before Halloween so I wasn't even there and it was around 8:30 that I realized I should have picked out a costume and discussed it with him before the morning of Halloween.  So I got out the Link costume and the Mario costume for him to pick out that morning before school.  I asked him if he wanted to be Brigham Zelda, or Brigham Mario.  He wasn't interested in any of them.  By chance I had also brought up this little pumpkin headband.  I asked him if he wanted to be Brigham Pumpkin and he said okay.  Luckily, he has an orange shirt that he could wear with it.  At least he was comfortable.

Jonathan and I went to Whittier to watch the parade.  Jonathan loved seeing all the kids in their costumes.  Finally Brigham's class came out and he did great.  He still covered his ears but it's still a step up from last year when he just collapsed on the floor and I had to carry him through.

 We stayed to see the 6th grade's Thriller dance.  It's so fun to see.   After the parade Jonathan and I went to visit Brigham's class.  It was fun to see all the costumes.

That night I took the boys Trick-or-Treating.  We decided Nathaniel was too old to go.  He seemed happy to stay home and hand out candy, though.  For Brigham's costume, I had a little more time to put it together so I quickly cut out some jack o'lantern shapes and taped them to his inside-out shirt.  I think it turned out pretty well and he seemed to really like it.

Towards the end of our trick-or-treating the nose started falling off a lot and we always had to check to make sure he still had it.  Everyone had fun, and luckily, my boys are about as much fans of walking around the neighborhood as I am so we mutually agreed on when it was time to go home.  Fun times!

Brigham really did love his "pumpkin hat", as we call it.  He wore it to bed with him and even wore it the next day.

I think it hits some pressure points just in front of his ears, just the way he likes it.  He even wore it to school this week on Wednesday and Thursday.  I hoped it helped him not have to cover his ears so much.  It's kind of holding him back at school.  They told me that it helped him on the playground.  Whatever works!

Pumpkin Day

Seriously, October just flew by.  I realized on the Saturday before Halloween, just in time, that if we wanted to carve pumpkins, we'd have to do it that very day.  Luckily, we were able to squeeze it in.

 Jonathan painted more than usual which made for a pretty cool pumpkin.

 Jaaromy decided to go for a different look this year.  It may or may not have something to do with me teasing him about how his pumpkin always has scars.  I like it.

 Nathaniel really outdid himself this year.  He really is an amazing artist.

 Of course I carved mine.  It's more work but it's worth it.

 Brigham did a good job painting too and had a lot of fun.

 Here they all are!

 One more without the flash.

Carving is still the best. :)

Our "Staycation"

I really don't like the word "staycation".  It sounds lame.  It's what you do when you can't do anything else.  Our Fall Break turned into a Staycation this year.  I had originally wanted to go to St. George and just do fun things, like swim in the hotel pool, see a movie, maybe go miniature golfing or something like that.  Unfortunately, my orchestra had their first concert of the season that same week.  Our final concert would be on that Thursday.  I considered bringing the boys to my concert and heading south as soon as it was over.  That would have put us in St. George around midnight...if we were lucky.  That didn't sound very fun.  Leaving the following morning didn't sound good either since we'd have to come back the next day.  We considered going somewhere closer, but there just wasn't anywhere to go in that short amount of time.

So, that's when we decided to do a Staycation.  It really wasn't so bad, it's nice to just hang out at home.  Jaaromy had already requested Friday off thinking that we'd go somewhere so we just took advantage of that.  So, Thursday night we took the boys to my concert.  My parents had come home just in time to come with us.  Even though they were pretty worn out from traveling they were nice enough to come.  We all rode up together and ate dinner at the Rocky Mountain Drive In, just like old times.  It was fun to spend time with them.  Friday was library night so we worked our activities around that.  We remembered that we have wanted to take the boys bowling for a long time and never have, so that was our first stop.  It was so much fun, the boys had a blast.  Brigham wouldn't uncover his ears, but I helped him use the ramp for his ball and he ended up getting second place.  Nathaniel came in last but I could tell he still had fun.  Up until now they've only bowled at home with the Wii, so this was a little bit of an adjustment.

 Final score!

 Everyone had a good time.

 One more picture, a little better lit.

First place winner!

They also had an arcade and we all had fun playing games and winning tickets.  After that we went to our favorite place, Village Inn, and had a tasty dinner.  Then we had just enough time to hurry and get some books at the library.

I know I said Staycations were lame, but this one was super fun.  We really need to do it again sometime.

It's Like They Never Left

After serving in Vancouver for 18 months, my parents are finally home.  I can't believe how fast the time went.  They started driving on Monday the 14th and arrived here on Wednesday.  I told Rachel to text me when they got there.  It was still a regular day with regular responsibilities so when I finally got the text, there wasn't much I could do about it for a few more hours.  During that time, I thought about how long it had been since I'd seen them, and how I didn't even remember what it was like to have them here.  That made me sad.

Finally, I had some free time to go and see them.  I opened the door and there was my dad and I gave him a big hug and it all came back to me and it was like they never left.  I remember perfectly what it's like to have them around and I love it!

Some of my siblings were there too.  I didn't think to take a picture but Rachelle was nice enough to share hers with me.

It was a good day.

-

Now that my parents were home, I want to try and spend more time with them.  For example, in one of our school lessons we had a Social Studies worksheet about farms.  Jonathan said he had never been to one so I decided to take him on a field trip to Wheeler Farm.  I haven't been since high school at least, and I don't remember much.  Then I had the brilliant idea to see if my parents could come.  My dad was busy, but my mom was happy to work it in to her day.  She even brought Brynna along with her which made it more fun.

 The first thing we saw were all the ducks and geese getting fed.  Lots of honking and quacking.

 They wanted to wave at the turkeys.

 Jonathan was really excited to see the pigs.

 More ducks on the lake.  Perhaps the same ducks?

 They had fun playing in this cute little playhouse.

 And in this cool tree.

 They had a race.  Brynna is pretty fast.

 Of course we stopped at the playground before we left.

They had a lot of fun playing together.  It was a fun field trip and I'm glad Brynna and Grandma could come with us.

It's good to have Grandma home again.